Renouard looked at him without anger, without any sort of expression. “Frightened of the dead? Eh? Well—all right. I will say it myself—I suppose once for all. . . .” Immediately he raised his voice very much.
“Send the boys down to bring up the luggage.”
“Yes, master.”
Renouard turned to his distinguished guests who, like a personally conducted party of tourists, had stopped and were looking about them.
“I am sorry,” he began with an impassive face. “My man has just told me that Mr. Walter . . .” he managed to smile, but didn’t correct himself . . . “has gone in a trading schooner on a short tour of the islands, to the westward.”
This communication was received in profound silence.
Renouard forgot himself in the thought: “It’s done!” But the sight of the string of boys marching up to the house with suit-cases and dressing-bags rescued him from that appalling abstraction.
“All I can do is to beg you to make yourselves at home . . . with what patience you may.”
This was so obviously the only thing to do that everybody moved on at once. The professor walked alongside Renouard, behind the two ladies.
“Rather unexpected—this absence.”